


Of Stories, Cover and Origin

by SabbyStarlight



Series: Cairo Week 2020! [2]
Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Cairo Week 2020, Gen, Improvise Day, Quick little fluffy tag to the first Cairo Day, Who tells your story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-14
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:01:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23649631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SabbyStarlight/pseuds/SabbyStarlight
Summary: Day Two:  Improvise Day!A beautiful tradition rose from the ashes of that disastrous mission in Cairo
Series: Cairo Week 2020! [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1701235
Comments: 23
Kudos: 40





	Of Stories, Cover and Origin

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Cairo Day!!! I went with the suggested prompt of Who Tells Your Story? for Improvise Day because using this as an opportunity to play around with a little origin story for Cairo Day itself, on Cairo Day, was too good to pass up.

"MacGyver, Dalton," Patricia Thornton greeted them without turning around to see who opened the door to the War Room, never taking her eyes away from the shaky camera feed following another team in the field. "Welcome home. Though I believe you were instructed to report to Medical for followups to clear you for instructional work and virtual consultations until you were ready to get back into the field."

  
"Aw, come on, Patty," Jack hopped on his crutches over to the closest couch, taking a moment to swing exaggeratedly before dropping down into the leather seat with a grin. "We've been cooped up, goin' from one hospital room to another for weeks now since that disaster of a mission. And we step off the plane, finally back home in the good old US of A, and you want us to go to Medical first thing? Have a heart."

  
"We're on our way," Mac promised, eyes falling on the bowl of paperclips sitting on the coffee table, longing to give his hands something to keep them occupied as he spoke but he had discovered the hard way that bending paperclip sculptures with one arm in a sling supporting the cast that ran past his elbow was more of a challenge than he had anticipated. "We just, um,"

  
"Agent Carpenter," Thornton interrupted him. "Isn't here. Which I'm guessing is the actual reason for your pit stop here. She's assisting another team on a mission in Belize since she managed to be the only able to not nearly get herself killed on what should have been a simple job in Egypt."

  
"Hey, now," Jack cut in, catching the embarrassed duck of his partner's head at her admonishment. "That gig was..."

  
"I read the preliminary version of your post-mission report," She turned around to face them finally. "Seeing as how it was filed from a hospital bed, Dalton, and Mac wasn't yet conscious at the time to file his own account, I'm going to chalk the colorful language and lack of actual information up to a side effect of prescribed medications and a head injury and let it slide."

  
"I covered all the basics," Jack protested.

  
She turned to him, pulling her attention away from the hurried escape happening on the screen behind her to open a file on the tablet in her hand and began reading. "We damn near died, Patty. And I really mean it this time. Think that mummy was cursed or something. Probably shouldn't have touched it, now that I think about it. Farhad and his men made us and that was a big ol' bomb they had there. That part was mostly Mac's fault though. Won't blame the kid since he isn't even conscious yet to remember how bad of an idea that was. Anyway, we're somehow still alive. You're welcome."

  
"That was the post-mission report you told me you took care of?" Mac turned to Jack, barely managing to choke back a laugh. "I'm sorry, Director. I'll have a full debrief written and sent to you by this evening," Mac assured. "As long as we don't get held up at Medical."

  
"Then I suggest you get going," She said, waving towards the door.

  
He nodded, thoroughly scolded, and made his way back to the door.

  
"Oh, and Mac?" She stopped him, offering a smile as he turned around again to face her, worried that she had been too hard on him over circumstances that were, admittedly, mostly out of his control. "I'm genuinely curious to hear what cover story you are going to come up with to try and explain this one."

  
The words were light-hearted, teasing, meant to ease some of the tension that had followed them into the room but they only added more weight to the young man's already heavy shoulders.

  
"Now don't go givin' the kid more stuff to worry about, Patty," Jack shook his head, knowing her joke would fall short as soon as it had passed her lips. "He already overthinks this job the way it is, get's all embarrassed when you try to make him take credit for somethin' going right. It gets a million times worse when somethin' goes wrong. And you know he lives with a civilian. He's gonna be wracking his brain trying to come up with a believable way to talk himself out of this now."

  
“I'm sorry,” She rolled her eyes. "But I'm sure he'll be fine. Not only is Agent MacGyver smart, he isn't plagued with nearly as severe a hero complex as you are."

  
“Hey, now, this don’t need to turn into a ‘mine’s bigger than your’s’ type situation up in here,” Jack shot her a playful wink, laughter verging on the edge of a straight-up cackle when he saw Mac’s cheeks turn red from where he was waiting at the door, pretending not to be listening in. “Some things just aren’t work appropriate, boss lady. HR is still on the fourth floor, right?”

  
“Medical. Both of you. Now.” She alternated a steely glare between them both that had Mac scuttling off towards the elevator with a quiet “Yes, Ma’am” mumbled under his breath.

  
“Plagued with a hero complex,” Jack shook his head in overexaggerated exasperation as he adjusted his crutches and pulled himself up, ignoring the twinges of pain the movement caused from his other still-healing injuries, trusting that Mac would hold the elevator door and wait for him. “C’mon, you know better than to use language like that when we’re headin’ to pay the medical wing a visit. That’s just askin’ for bad mojo to follow us up there!”

  
"I think you're safe, seeing as how you two pretty much managed to already burn through all of the Egyptian plagues while you were there."

  
"That's... actually a really good point, Patty," He decided, hopping across the room, crutches clicking against the floor. "Talk soon."

  
"I'm getting a copy of your medical reports," She called through the swinging closed door. "So don't try to convince me you're ready to return to fieldwork before either of you are cleared."

  
"Yeah, yeah," Jack brushed her off with a grin. "I'll be running tac sims by the end of the week and Mac'll be walking your other teams through disarming a bomb over a shaky camera feed like that one," He nodded towards the screen behind her where the team she had been observing when they walked in had run into some trouble of their own. "Don't worry about us. We'll be back here before you even have a chance to miss us again."

  
He kept an eye on Mac once he made it to the elevator, knowing that while Thornton's words had been nothing more than a joke, her own way of assuring him that she wasn't actually angry about how things had gone down and that she was glad they were home, mostly safe and sound, Mac hadn't taken them as such. He didn't say anything about it though, and Jack didn't push, knowing that Mac would open up when he was ready.

  
The moment came sooner than he had expected.

  
"What am I going to tell Bozer about this?" Mac asked, leaning against the counter in Jack's exam room, waiting for the older man to be cleared. He had finished his own follow-up only moments before and immediately went to find his partner.

  
"I don't know man," Jack shrugged. "Same thing we always tell him, I guess?"

  
"This was way worse than anything I've had to cover up before," He repressed a shudder. "I honestly don't know how we made it out of there alive."

  
"We almost didn't." Jack agreed. "Look, he doesn't even know we're back stateside yet, right?" He continued when Mac shook his head. "And we already agreed you're stayin' with me until we're both a little more healed up. So don't worry about it, it doesn't have to be some big cover story. You can stay till you get that plaster off, even, if that would make it easier."

  
"Pretty sure he's not going to believe that an energy conference is going to run for another month," Mac protested, appreciating the offer even as he passed on it. "It's only been a few weeks and he's already getting suspicious."

  
"Car wreck," Jack suggested. "Taxi driver who never should have got his license in the first place. A night out on the town turned into one too many, you were totally hammered and took a tumble down a set of stairs. Skateboarding accident. The options are endless, dude."

  
"None of those are gonna explain away the nightmares. And, seriously? Skateboarding accident?" Mac laughed, scrunching up his nose. "Maybe we should just agree to never talk about that entire mission," He pulled out the stool tucked away beneath the counter and dropped onto it with a huff, still-sore muscles growing tired from standing. "I mean it. Like, ever."

  
"If there ever was one I don't wanna relive, it's got to be that one," Jack agreed, memories of the events that had occurred in Cairo a few weeks ago flashing through his mind, ever-growing fuel for his own nightmares that had interrupted any chance of a healing sleep ever since. "So what, any time someone brings it up, we shut 'em down? Automatically?"

  
"We don't talk about Cairo," Mac tried it out with a grin, liking how it sounded. It was comforting to know that they could begin to put that entire disaster behind them and move on. Or try to, at least.

  
"And, hey," Jack continued, running with the idea. "Since literally everything, and I do mean everything, that could have gone wrong there ended up going wrong? That can be there to remind us that no matter how close a call we make it through, how bad a mission goes, it can't ever be as bad as that one. It won't ever get Cairo-bad."

"You don't know that."

  
"Oh, I do know that. Cause you're only lucky enough to survive somethin' like that once. And we went and used up every ounce of luck we had between the two of us and probably begged, stole, and borrowed some from anyone close by to make it out of there alive."

  
Mac nodded. His injuries had left him unconscious for a large portion of his recovery, so he hadn't had as much time to mull over the events of that disaster of a mission, but even he didn't have an explanation for how they managed to survive. "It's still a little too soon to turn into a joke though, isn't it?"

  
"Naw, never," Jack smiled. "How else are you supposed to deal with trauma? Actually talkin' about it? Who does that?"

  
"We can start pretending it never happened as soon as we get post-mission reports filed," Mac agreed with a fond shake of his head. "Thornton was serious about wanting those. Actual ones, not whatever it was you put in the preliminaries you sent in."

  
"I sent her the highlight reel," Jack assured with a wave of his hand. "It covered the basics."

  
"Those are important though," Mac protested. "I'm serious, Jack. Do you not ever think about it? How one day those are going to be the only records of what happened on these crazy missions we get sent on?"

  
"Okay, you know I hate bein' serious. The world's already serious enough." He pointed a finger at Mac, emphasizing his point. "And didn't we just agree that we weren't gonna talk about what happened over there? Which is it, dude? We pretend it never happened and try to move on with our lives or we share the story with the world, makin' it a little bit crazier each time it's told?"

  
"I'm not saying we need to tell anybody anything," Mac laughed. "Except for our boss. Just that, I don't know, one day we might not make it back from one of these jobs. And I think it's kinda important to remember the close calls that we do survive."

  
"I see your point," Jack admitted, scratching at the beard that had grown over the past few weeks spent in the hospital. "One day there won't be anyone to tell the stories of the messes we got ourselves into."

  
"And out of," Mac added.

  
"Tell you what," Jack decided. "If I never see another pyramid in my life, it'll be too soon, I don't ever want to relive that. But I get where you're coming from. So how about, we don't talk about Cairo. We shake on it, right here, right now, that nobody gets to know what went down there except for those of us who were there and those at the top of the food chain who absolutely have to know. But, because I'm pretty sure that day is cursed now, plagued if you will," He shot Mac a conspiratorial wink. "What if we take it off each year. We don't work it, mark it on the calendar and don't take a job that will fall on it. Really stick to our guns on it, and use that day, not to celebrate it exactly, cause the only thing worth celebrating is the fact that we survived it... Actually, you know what? Yeah. Hell, that's a reason to celebrate. You and me. April fourteenth. Every year."

  
Mac laughed, agreeing to the plan even if it didn't make very much sense. "What'll we call it? Cairo Day? I'm all for it man, just don't go expecting it to become an actual holiday or something."

  
"Cairo Day." Jack agreed with a nod. "It don't have to be big to be considered a holiday, so long as it's celebrated by the right people."

  
"Every year?"

  
"Every year," Jack confirmed, reaching out his hand. "You and me."

  
"Alright. Cairo Day. And the rest of the year we don't mention it. I'm in," Mac reached out his own hand and they shook on it, sealing the deal and beginning a tradition.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Cairo Day, everyone! I’m so happy to get to celebrate it and keep the tradition going with y’all.


End file.
